Patrik Ringborg

Biography

Patrik Ringborg is one of Scandinavia’s most experienced opera conductors. He is as renowned at home as he is sought-after abroad, having made his name in German opera houses with the music of Wagner and Strauss.

Patrik studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and with the Strauss scholar Kurt Bendix. He started his career on the music staff of the Royal Swedish Opera and as an assistant at the Semperoper in Dresden and the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. Major appointments in Essen and Freiburg followed, before the commencement of a decade-long tenure as Music Director at the State Theatre in Kassel in 2007. There, he conducted over 150 concerts and productions of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, Lohengrin, Parsifal, and Tannhäuser as well as Strauss’s Salome, Die Frau ohne Schatten, Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra.

Patrik has appeared as a guest conductor at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar, the Staatsoper in Dresden, the Volksoper in Vienna, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin and Den Norske Opera in Oslo, among others. He conducted Dame Kiri te Kanawa’s farewell performance at the Cologne Opera (Der Rosenkavalier) and the Royal Swedish Opera’s appearances at the Savonlinna Festival (Elektra).

Numerous distinguished German orchestras have engaged Patrik as a guest conductor, including the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Munich Radio Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and the WDR Symphony and Gürzenich Orchestras in Cologne. He is a frequent guest with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin.

Patrik works extensively at home in Sweden. He was appointed Principal Guest Conductor at The Gothenburg Opera in 2000, where he has conducted Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Die Walküre and Tristan und Isolde. Also in Gothenburg he has also taken charge of Strauss’s Salome and the world premiere of Hans Gefors’ Notorious. He returns in 2018 with Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.

At the Royal Swedish Opera, Patrik conducted Christof Loy’s production of Parsifal, the world premiere of Daniel Börtz's Medea and a gala concert to mark the 490th anniversary of the Royal Swedish Orchestra. Also in concert, has conducted the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, taking charge of the latter’s performance at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in 2008.

Patrik was the first ever conductor to win the Opera Prize bestowed by the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, which was awarded for his interpretations of Wagner’s Parsifal and Das Rheingold. Patrik is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.